Puzzle of the Silver Persian (37 page)

“You made a night of it,” Piper suggested. “I never heard of any place open there after sunrise.”

“Well—” said Eddie thoughtfully….

“For the last few hours we’ve been riding up and down Riverside Drive in a taxi,” Barbara said, her voice even and expressionless.

“Why?”

“Because I had to make up my mind,” Barbara admitted. “About something private.”

“About running away?” Miss Withers put in.

“Partly that,” said the girl.

“She was trying to decide whether or not to marry me,” Eddie offered. “Imagine hesitating about a thing like that!” He grinned.

“
Will
you begin at the beginning?” Piper asked. He tried vainly to find an ashtray with room enough left in it to contain his cigar. Finally he used the rug.

“I’ve been visiting my sister for the past week,” Barbara recited, as if she had rehearsed it. “Tonight, I mean last night, there was a party. For me, mostly, because I’m sort of a sap from Syracuse. It broke up late and Violet got rid of the last of the die-hards by changing into her riding clothes. She said they could drop her off at the stable….” She looked at Piper through long lashes. “You’ve been to the stable?”

He nodded. “Well, I wasn’t supposed to go on to Harlem with the others,” Barbara continued. “And I couldn’t ride with my sister because I haven’t riding things. Besides, she said I ought to get to bed….”

“Reasonable at that,” Miss Withers pointed out.

“But she wasn’t! You’d have thought Violet was my mother, instead of a half-sister who never even wrote me a letter for ten years, and who took me in only because the aunt I’d been living with in Syracuse had died and I didn’t have any other place to go….”

She took a deep breath and went swiftly on. “So Eddie knew I wanted to go on to Harlem with them all and have
fun
. He said he’d see to it that Violet got into the first cab, and I could come down and get into the second, and she’d never know. Only when we stopped at the stables Violet found I was in the cab and we had a terrific fight….”

Miss Withers’s eyebrows went up.

“You hadn’t heard about it?” Barbara bit her lip. “That cowboy beau of Violet’s was gawking through the door and I was sure he must have blabbed….

“Anyway, Eddie had to go on without me, but I caught a taxi and told the man where the place was and I caught the crowd in Harlem.”

“And had
fun
,” Miss Withers nodded sympathetically. “You say that Mr. Latigo What’s-his-name of the stables was friendly with your sister?”

Barbara shrugged. “She got a laugh out of him anyway. Even had him come up here one evening, but I guess he didn’t look as interesting in his best clothes. He thought we were all laughing at him because we tried to make him perform—I think he went home mad.”

“One more question,” said the inspector. “Who was your sister’s boy-friend?”

Barbara hesitated and looked sidewise at the young man beside her. He smoothed the very peaked lapels of his dinner jacket thoughtfully.

“Me, as much as anybody,” he said slowly. “But we were just—”

“Just good friends!” interrupted Piper wearily. “I know, I know. By the way, what’s your name?”

“Eddie—Edward M. Fry,” the young man admitted. He seemed to retain his jovial air with a certain amount of difficulty.

“Business?”

“I’m a veteran in the army of the unemployed,” said Mr. Fry. “Used to work around Coney until times got tough….”

“And you support yourself in the style to which you had become accustomed—how?” Miss Withers interrupted.

He smiled apologetically. “I’ve been lucky out at Beaulah Park,” Eddie admitted. “Guessing on the goats … horses to you, lady.”

“But you weren’t so lucky at love?” Piper pressed.

The young man hedged and Barbara saved him. “My sister Violet had an unhappy marriage,” she told them. “She was divorced about a year ago and since then I don’t think there’s been any man who mattered.”

“Married, eh? To a chap named Feverel?”

Barbara shook her head. “Vi and I were born Foley,” she explained wearily. “She changed it to Feverel when she started her career as a model. But her husband’s name was Gregg, Don Gregg.”

“And she divorced him, eh? We’ll have a hunt started for Mr. Gregg,” said Piper quickly.

Barbara smiled on one side of her mouth. “You won’t have to hunt very far,” she told them. “He wouldn’t pay up and Violet had him thrown into alimony jail.”

“Jail, eh? Then there was no love lost between them?”

“Not on Violet’s part anyway,” the younger sister told them. “I’ll show you just what she thought of her ex-husband.” She rose from her chair and went over to the parakeet’s cage. “Look there!” she said.

The inspector almost gave vent to a guffaw, but stopped. In the bottom of the bird-cage, instead of the usual folded bit of newspaper, was a cabinet photograph of a blond and plumply handsome man of perhaps thirty years.

Barbara took up one of the larger ashtrays and dumped its contents into the fireplace. Here too, pasted on the bottom, was a smaller photograph of the same face, blackened and discolored by countless expiring cigarettes.

“Well, why don’t you laugh, everyone does!” cried the girl.

There was only a stony silence, during which Miss Withers tried not to shiver. Then the parakeet screeched shrilly and a ring came at the door.

The four of them stood immobile. There was another ring and a man’s voice called, “Miss Feverel!”

Piper nodded at the girl. “See who it is—stall him!” She obediently went to the door, with the other three at Piper’s gesture drawing back out of line with the doorway.

“Who is it?” Barbara cried, ear to the panel.

“It’s Thomas, Miss Feverel—with a very important message from your father-in-law….”

Barbara looked around and saw that the inspector was motioning her to open up.

The door swung and a man pushed hurriedly inside. He was neither old nor young, thin nor fat. Dressed in a musty and dampened suit of sober black, with a greenish derby clutched in one gnarled hand, he was the picture of an old family retainer.

“Mr. Gregg—he wants to see you,” said the newcomer. His voice was fairly dripping with gloom. “Please get your things, Miss Feverel, and come with me … or it may be too late!”

“And
why
may it be too late?” interposed the inspector. Thomas looked past the girl and saw the others coming toward him. His mouth dropped open….

“Excuse me, I didn’t know….”

“This is not Miss Feverel,” Piper snapped. “It’s her sister. Violet Feverel was murdered on the bridle path of Central Park this morning—”

He stopped at the look of blank surprise which had come across the worn and dusty features of the man in the doorway. He gasped twice, clutching the knob for support.

“Miss Feverel
murdered
?” he repeated. “No—it can’t be! You’re lying to me, you’re trying …” He stopped, regaining control of himself. “But nobody would want to murder
her …
it’s old Mr. Gregg they’re after!”

Piper came closer. “What do you mean? Somebody’s trying to murder who?”

“Mr. Pat Gregg, my employer,” said Thomas. “That’s why he wants to see Miss Feverel right away—she used to be married to his son, you know. The old man wants to talk to her before he dies—he knows he’s going to die.”

“Do you know it too?” rasped Piper.

“No man knows such things for sure,” said Thomas sententiously. “It’s not for me to say,” his face darkened. “But I do know this—yesterday somebody poisoned old Rex, the police dog. It wasn’t just ordinary meanness between neighbors either—for that dog was trained to take food from nobody but myself and Mr. Gregg!”

“And you think,” Miss Hildegarde Withers asked quietly, “you think that anyone meaning harm to the old man would first remove the dog who protected him?”

Thomas nodded slowly. Then he turned toward the door. “I got to get back there,” he said.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1934 by Stuart Palmer.

Copyright © renewed.

Cover design by Mimi Bark

978-1-4804-1884-4

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